How Neil deGrasse Tyson Feels About the Hawaii Telescope Protests | Joe Rogan

What do you think about what's going on in Hawaii now with the protesting of the building of this largest and latest telescope? Yes, the TMT, 30 meter telescope, which would be the largest ever by far of any kind of telescope. The history of astronomy is one where bigger telescopes become bigger buckets to collect light. And today are the same as telescopes when they were invented, they're just bigger. The principle behind them is bigger because what they're doing is simple. All you're trying to do is get as much light as possible. And the more light you get, the dimmer is the object you can detect and the farther away is the object you can see. And so for every generation of new large telescopes that have been built, it has increased and deepened our understanding of our place in the universe. So that's just the background. The proposal is for a 30 meter telescope, largest ever, on the big island of Hawaii in Mauna Kea where there are other telescopes there. That's where the CAC is, right? Yeah, I think that's where the CAC is. I think they cited it in a place that sort of tucked behind most sight lines to it. But that's not so much what's important here. It's that the Native Hawaiians from what I've read view the mountain as a sacred place. And so to put a telescope, yet another telescope there becomes sort of invasion of sacred land. And so yeah, it's a, there's a standoff, lest I looked. I mean people protesting in the streets. And there's some Native Hawaiians who embrace this because it means jobs, high quality jobs engineering jobs, because you got to build it, you got to maintain it. There's an entire supportive infrastructure for that, that means jobs. And it's done in collaboration with the University of Hawaii. And all the other telescopes are partnered with the University of Hawaii where people are educated there. And so at the end of the day, you have to ask, well, how are you going to make decisions going forward? Are you going to make them democratically? Then you take a vote. Or do you want the Natives to be the deciders of their own fate? And is that democratic? Okay, so the Natives vote. Okay. Or is it the few people who are protesting? Do they win the day? I mean, it's complicated and it's very, it's very, there are a lot of nuanced issues going on there. There's a branch of thinking that the United States government and normal municipal leaders have no authority over it. There's some who claim that this is native Hawaiian property that does not belong to any municipal entity of the US government. So therefore, even state representatives have no say. Right? So there's a lot going on there. Okay. But if I were to weigh in, this is how I would do so. Okay. I would say first, I think what should happen is, I don't know if they even have, the infrastructure, I don't know how the system is set up, but if they could set it up this way, if the mountain is viewed as sacred by the Natives, the Natives should have entire say of what happens to the mountain. Okay. That's how I think that should be. So now, what you want to make sure is that whatever decision gets made and voted upon by the Natives, that is fully informed. You don't want to vote being misinformed or under informed. In any election, let alone whether you're voting for a telescope on your sacred mountain. Okay. Otherwise, you're voting out of nowhere. Right? You're influencing your future based on partial information. And decisions based on partial information are bad decisions no matter what. Okay. So I would say, hold the vote with the Natives and make sure everybody's fully informed. And here's a bit of information I just want to add to the information. Okay. You know what we do as astrophysicists. We study the universe rather passively at that. We sit there at the end of a telescope and wait for light to reach us. It's not a Petri dish where we stir it or heat it or freeze it or crack it or we're just kind of there communing with the cosmos. My PhD thesis was significantly fed by data that I obtained from mountaintops at telescopes. I got my data from mountains in Chile, Cerro Tololo, and it employed all the Natives, the Natives, the local people. That's another telescope that, so there's all these telescopes that all have specific access points to the universe. They're not all asking the same questions. Right. And so it's the collection of all the data that gives us the complete understanding, what we think is a complete understanding of the universe. So what we do is try to understand our place in the universe. And all I'm going to say is that if you have power over what happens on that mountain and it's sacred to you, because whatever that is, it is something important to you and your sense of your understanding of your place in this world. That would be spiritual significance. I can tell you that what we learn as astrophysicists from those mountaintops gives us a deeper understanding of who and what we are in this universe. So I would say that whatever is your concept of God, be it the creator of the universe, the spirit energy that pervades all of space and time, whatever is your concept, the discoveries of astrophysicists bring you closer to it. I get your perspective. Let me be the opposing view. They feel... I'm not trying to... No, I know you're not. This is just information. I'm putting this is information and I walk out of the room and then you all vote. Right. I'm not, you know, we believe in democracy here and majority rules. That's kind of a good thing. It's kind of worked. Right. But if it's not majority rules, I don't know how they're going to make decisions. But let's say invent a future where the natives vote. If they vote, I want to make sure they heard what I just said. And now take control of your own fate. I just don't think they care. I think they've decided that that's a sacred space and they don't want anybody doing anything to it. Then that's their decision. You think that's okay? I don't judge people's... But if you wanted to make a convincing appeal to them... No, all I would say is what I just told you. That's it. That is all I would tell them. And when they vote, I want them to understand that fact. I could take it one step further and say... ...mountaintops, because of the access they give astrophysicists and by proxy us all to the universe, are sacred places to scientists. Okay. Now it's not sacred in a religious sense, but it's sacred in a... In terms of a pathway to knowing and understanding who and what we are in this universe, we place great value on that. So, but it's not our land. It's with, you know... So specifically these things have to take place. Europeans didn't come to Hawaii and find legions of scientists. They're conducting experiments. Okay. They found native peoples governing themselves. So that's that. The consequence, if it gets voted down and that's permanent and there's no way around that, that telescope is still going to be built. It just won't be built in Hawaii. Well, where will it be built? Don't they have to be built on mountaintops? Yeah. So there are other mountaintops. It's an elevation issue, right? Yeah. You want to be above, you know, schmutzy clouds and haze and you want to dry environment so there's less rain. I went to the Keck. Fewer clouds. Oh, you visited. Yeah. Very good. I went to the Keck more than 10 years ago, the first time. And it was, I got very fortunate. It was a night where the moon was not out. Yes. Moon is not the astronomer's favorite thing. Yeah. You want the darkest sky you can. We were worried as we were driving up there that it was really cloudy, but we drove through the clouds and we got to the top and we got to the observatory and it was the most amazing, without telescopes. Just we, there was telescopes there, but without telescopes. It was the most amazing view of the sky I'd ever seen in my life and it changed my perspective of our place in the universe. This is what we do. It looked like we were on a spaceship, like we were flying through the universe because of the diffused lighting in, on the big island, cause it's all set up so that it doesn't ruin what they're trying to accomplish at the Keck. When you, when you're up there. Minimize reflections in the wrong place. It's amazing. Not only that, if there was a moon out and you did ascend up through the clouds, the moonlight illuminates the clouds and you are an island in the middle of white cotton and you're not even connected to the earth. It's what you imagine Mount Olympus would have been. I've been up there for that when that happens too. With the gods up there and it's kind of, that's their place. It's there. So, so, so yes. And so any, my, my brethren, my fellow astrophysicist who have also observed from mountain tops, by the way, it's becoming a lost art. Because when I, it's not lost, but it's becoming something we don't do anymore. Something called service observing, where you put in your observing program and it's handed to a technician at the telescope who points the telescope, gets the data and sends it back to you. So the next generation doesn't have the experience that my generation did because it was a pilgrimage to the top of the mountain and you converted your life's path, you converted your life's schedule to become nocturnal. And in so doing you, you know, this is the journey was long enough because you're in the middle of nowhere. Now you got to go nocturnal. And by the time you're ready for this, you are communing with the cosmos. It is you, the detector, the telescope and the universe. And there's an eerie silence up there too, because you don't hear any, the hum of maybe the, the, the motor of the telescope, but that's it. And so, so all I'm saying is if they choose to not have it, the telescope will go somewhere else. One of them is the Canary islands. These are also volcanic hilltops, not as high as, as Mount Ikea, as at 14,000 feet, by the way, I should have checked at what temperature water boils at the top of Mount Ikea, we could have rounded that story out. But I think it's around 180 degrees actually. I think I did actually calculate it one time, but anyhow, so. So you'd find a mountaintop and we'll put it somewhere else and the data won't be as good, but that'll be a consequence of it. And none of that'll go to Hawaii. How do you think that's going to get resolved though? If you had a guess? I don't know. Um, I, I just don't know. A lot of people are against it, including Jason Momoa, Aquamance against it. Oh, uh-huh. Who's out there protesting? Yeah. And so when you get celebrity types to put the weight of their name behind it, it, it magnifies the cause of others, even if they're in the minority. And so I, I, like I said, I think natives should, I, does everyone know who all the natives are? Is there, is there some listing so that they can all vote for this one thing? You wouldn't want people voting who are not native. If you're voting on whether it's so sacred, you don't want to put a telescope there. You'd want people who have a, a, an indigenous, um, an indigenous concern for what goes on there. And indigenous in reference to Hawaii is relative. Every usage of the word indigenous is relative. Yeah. Especially with Hawaii, because I mean, the only indigenous people are black people in Africa. Okay. Because life, human life began in Africa. You, everyone else traveled to where they were. So, so native, it's, you set a timeframe to declare what is native and what's not. Yeah. And a native in its, in its simplest form is, are you born there? So I'm a native New Yorker, I'm born there, but I wasn't the original settler there. I would, my species did not form on Manhattan Island. So everybody traveled to where they are. They just got there before the Europeans. And so that has become the definition of indigenous art. Were you there when the Europeans landed, then you're indigenous, but to other life forms on that, on that rock on that, uh, um, uh, Hawaii's or a volcanic, it's a volcanic, um, archipelago. Um, uh, you know how that happens by the way, you have all these multiple volcanoes in a string. You ever wonder why, how that happens? Sure. You did wonder, well, you, you know, why? Oh, because there's a hotspot beneath earth's crust. And it's just sitting there. Okay. And when you're beneath earth's crust stuff, doesn't move around the way it does on earth's crust, earth's crust shifts. Okay. So that hotspot gurgles up, makes a volcano. Then the hotspot goes dormant, but the con the, the shelf still drifts. You still have continental drift. So it drifts. Then the hotspot says time for me to gurgle again, it grows up. Now you get another volcano. And then it goes dormant. That volcano goes dormant. It shifts. You get another one. Anytime you see a chain of islands, jet guarantee they're made by volcanoes over enough time for continental gift to have shifted the plates over the hotspot of earth's mantle. So do you think what they're concerned with is the eventual spoiling of this beautiful natural resource that slowly but surely people are putting up houses there and developments and all these different things. And then the scientists are saying, we need this sacred land because we're going to put a volcano and they're like, look, there's already a, there's already a, I mean, we're going to put a telescope. There's already a telescope up here. Enough. You think that's what it is? They're trying to halt the progress of civilization or I mean, maybe progress is a bad word, the expansion of civilization. Yeah. I mean, let's go back. Uh, what did Teddy Roosevelt do? He said, we got to preserve these lands because they're beautiful. And by the way, he said that after he shot all those elephants and tigers and lions and tigers and bears. Uh, yeah. I mean, I, I, I hail from a museum, the American museum of natural history where he's the patron saint of that museum. What happened was he realizes how important this land is and how beautiful it is. And he is the, he's the patron saint of the national park system. So, so that's the secular version of sacred, right? We don't say it's sacred, but we've all decided as a community that we care about these lands and you don't want to drill on it. You don't want to put housing. Um, was it Lyndon Johnson's wife, Lady Bird Johnson, who said our freeways that we're so carefully building after the second world war, the Eisenhower freeway project, okay. I, you know, the interstate system is, uh, this is our country. We want to keep it beautiful. So certain stretches of it. There are no billboards. Billboards would, you know, um, would change your relationship to nature. So certain stretches of interstate are secularly sacred, if, if I can say that. So I remember visiting, uh, uh, visiting Australia and there's the, the famous rock in the, um, out in the Outback, uh, the Olu, Olu, Olu. Please help me get the, get my correct pronunciation of this. Olu, Olu. And it said, it's, I'm told it's one coherent geologic rock. It's not just an assembly of rocks. And so I don't know enough about the geology of it, but I do know that the Australian aborigines, Olu, Olu, and okay. Iconic red rock. Look at that cool thing. Okay. So that is one sort of geologic thing. And, uh, and climbers want to climb it. Oh, by the way, that's huge. It's miles in circumference. Okay. So, uh, we visited it. I rented a bicycle with my wife and kids and we rode around it. Okay. So now, um, that is sacred to the local indigenous peoples. So they don't want you to climb on it. Well, I'm a rock climber. I, you know, what do you care? I'm not going to ruin it. I'm not going to, they don't want you to climb on it. And I try to think to myself, is there a counterpart to this that would sort of wake up a Westerner to say, I get it. All right. Now suppose some people from some natives from Alaska or from the, some tribes from Africa or some aborigines came up from these remote places of the world, walked up to the Vatican and said, we want to climb the walls of this Vatican just for sport. What would we say? We want to climb the walls of St. Paul's Cathedral in downtown London. What would you say? You say no. Yeah, but are those comparable? I mean, these are human constructions. We want to repel down the tower of Big Ben. You're going to say no. Get the fuck, you would say no. These are important structures to us. No. Are you going to say the equivalent? Well, we built those and the natives didn't build the rock. Right. Exactly. Okay. It depends on how important that detail is to you. All I'm saying is on the level of weeks, say this is sacred. You say that is sacred. And now you're going to have different rules for who's climbing what. I think it'll force you to take pause. Well, here's an argument in like supporting what you're saying. Look at what's going on with the Himalayas. I mean, it's the human shit that they had, they leave behind there. All the climbers. So disturbing. Yeah. The climbers. Yeah. It's horrible. It's really horrible. I mean, they, there's tons of it. Tons of human waste. Okay. So what you do there is if it's still not a problem that people are climbing, it's that they're leaving waste. You don't stop the climbers. You tax them at some level so that now you have cleanup crews that come up after them. Yeah, but it's incredible. But there's solutions. It's incredible to bring anything back. So you tax them, you make it worth it. All right. So you understand like they have to leave the bodies up there, right? You know that they can't. That's what I heard. That's what I heard. Well, why do you think they could bring tons of shit when they can't even bring bodies? Here's what I'm saying. When they invented cars and cars were killing people in the street because people know how to cross the street. They didn't know where to cross the street. People don't know how to stop the cars. They say, well, cars are actually a pretty useful thing. Do we ban cars? No, we make stoplights. Oh, people across there, well, we make crosswalks. Oh, let's put lanes so the cars don't hit each other. And let's make airbags so that you don't fly through the windshield. All right. So there are ways around problems if you value the thing that it is that you want to do. So people leaving crap up there, you make them bring it back or you develop a system that enables the stuff to come back no matter what. And if you can't do that and you don't want it messed up, then cancel the whole operation. We didn't cancel cars. We got really innovative about how to keep them. A big difference between cars and human shit that's left in the side of the mountain. I think the real problem too is I think if you value mountain climbing and you want to keep doing it, then you solve the problem. This is what engineers do. That's all they do. Right. But you know, they've never been able to bring those bodies back because of the physical limitations of the human body. It's barely, you barely have enough juice to climb. It's so thin, the air so thin, it's so dangerous. And the energy draw on you is so high. Leave those bodies there. So is that the human shit that you're talking about? Or is that? No, there's that. You're talking about the fact that humans were there, that we got, we're not very clean about our presence. That's what you're talking about, right? We're just being human. We have to go. When you got to go, you got to go. When you got to go up there, you just open up the hatch and let her rip down the side of a mountain.